User blog:Ace1580/The Problem of Pornography - 3
Introduction Now that we have gone over some of the foundational spiritual issues of lust, we can start taking some of that foundation and moving forward with it into some practical application. Over the next few lessons, we will explore why pornography is such a problem, some of the lies pornography tells, and the deliverance and freedom God offers. This lesson we will explore why lust presents such a problem for people in the first place. By the end of this lesson, the implications my seems pretty dire, particularly if you are currently struggling with pornography, lust, or any other sin that sucks you in and holds on. But remember as we are working through this, that there is hope on the other side of the tunnel. We are examining the problem, and by the end we will be examining the solution. We have a promise of freedom on ther other side of slavery. Beyond death, lies resurrection. Some of my Story I struggled with pornography for years. Growing up in a Christian home, it seemed like it was the one sin that consistently played havoc with my life. While I struggled with selfishness and pride, anger, dishonesty and the like, these were not a regular part of my Christian walk. I repented of them, tried to change the way I was living, and generally speaking found freedom in the long run. Pornography didn't work this way. I was sucked into it and found myself unable to escape. I prayed that God would give me freedom and time and time again I would just come back to my old habits in frustration. Pornography had become and addiction and the God who promised me freedom, was not delivering (or so I thought). I often wondered how I got to the place I was to begin with. What process of thought had allowed me to think that pornography was acceptable in the first place? Why did I come back after catching a glimpse for the first time? What did I not know then that would have convinced me to stay far, far away? Israel’s Struggle I am not alone in this, and neither is anyone who struggles with sexual temptation; it's been going on for thousands and thousands of years. In fact, we weren't six generation out from Adam before Lamech decided that one wife wasn't enough and married two. And like me and many others, the history of mankind finds itself repeatedly returning to sexual sin over and over and over again. It wasn’t long after Lamech that good godly men started marrying just anyone strictly because of how they looked (Gen 6:2), that Noah's son took advantage of his father's drunken state to stare at him naked (Gen 9:22), that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of just how perverse they had become (Gen 19:23-25), and Lot's daughters inebriated and subsequently slept with their own father. Suffice to say that things went pretty far south pretty fast. And when it came to Israel, when they started wavering from their God, the first place one should always look is at their sexual purity (or lack of). Israel was warned repeatedly not to intermarry with other nations, yet it was often the first thing they did when they moved into the neighborhood. David, who loved God dearly, let himself become ensnared by a woman bathing on the roof and lost the right to build God's temple because of it. Solomon began to bring down the kingdom his father helped established thanks, in part, to giving into the desires of his 700 (!) wives and 300 (!) concubines (1 Kings 11:3). Ahab led the whole nation into idolatry (into a pagan religion based heavily in fornication) and was remembered as doing more to enrage God than any other king thanks to being led astray by Jezebel (1 Kings 16:31-32). And when Balak wanted to destroy Israel, he went to Balaam, who knew that Israel's weakness could be brought forth by luring them to intermarry with pagan nations. (Num 22). What we’re up against Made for Sex Why is it so hard? Why do so many people struggle with sexual sin? In order to answer that question, we have to go back to the very beginning. Sexual temptation is hard to overcome for one simple reason: God made sex, and God made it good. Back in Genesis 2, God made woman for man (and by extension, man for woman) and told them to be fruitful. The original plan for sex wasn’t complicated, but it was specific. Sex was supposed to be something shared only between a man and woman in the context of a union. It was a part of a greater scheme that involved not only physical intimacy, but also emotional, and both were supposed to be a lifelong commitment. And like pretty much all of the things God created, when sex was respected within the greater plan for that union, it was awesome, so much so that even God resolutely declared that what he had made was good. It should come as no surprise to us that when it comes to the tricks that the enemy will employ to make us stumble, the first thing he will try to utilize is what we are already built to enjoy. Take a look at any of the most pervasive sins out there, or the struggles that are the hardest to overcome. They tend to be things that we already enjoy and aren’t bad; things like taking pride in your work, enjoying food and drink, and even patriotism. Leveraging those things is much easier than convincing us to do something outside of our tendencies or character. Deceit, hatred, and jealousy may all be things that humans are good at (since the fall), but deep down we know they’re wrong. Convincing a Christian to steal, lie, or outright murder someone requires the enemy to get you to questions your fundamental beliefs. With the good things that God created, the only effort necessary is to get us to push just a little outside the bounds of what God has planned, and the enemy has a lot of way of making this happen. Sex Culture We live in a culture and society that doesn’t recognize the plan God has for sex. Like the Israelites of the Old Testament, those of us who are trying to maintain purity are surrounded by those who have no reservation about such things. We have a society that is eager to tell us that having no limits is normal. You see, the culture we live in recognizes that we were designed to enjoy sex, but it fails to recognize the plan that goes along with it. Culture assumes that because we enjoy sex, it must be acceptable under any circumstances. Our society even makes a pretty hefty argument from a biological standpoint: that satisfying our sexual desires is a biological need. If you look on any given (secular) list of human needs, you’ll find the obvious things like water and food, and the more esoteric things, like security and self actualization, but you’ll also find sex on there. Failure to indulge our sexual desires suggests an unhealthy repression of innate urges. It’s not just prudish, it’s contrary to physical wellbeing! There’s a couple of big problems with this though. First, just because a desire is “natural” does not intrinsically mean that we need to fulfill it, there are plenty of natural desires that we have to repress all the time for various reasons. Secondly, no one has died from failure to have their sexual needs met. Really, all this is just a way individuals can justify doing what feels good, and because our culture abides by simple economics. Sex sells. Since nothing is wrong with sex outside of God’s plan, there is no problem taking advantage of the fact that we desire it in order to sell a product, or to garner some attention. The result is that when we walk out our front door, we are inundated with billboards, magazine covers, and plenty of people around us that make sex an idol to be chased; the internet has made access to pornography easier than ever before in history. Even when we are trying desperately to hold onto purity, everywhere we turn, sex is there. Even as Christians, we will tend to make allowances in the movies we watch, or the clothing we wear. Avoiding any sort of exposure to the world’s ideas of sex is nearly impossible. Culture has thoroughly overwhelmed us. Again, remember that this is nothing new. The moral landscape was even worse back in the days Paul was encouraging the early Christians to sexual purity, and if they can overcome their culture, so can we. Illicitness The interesting thing is that the enemy doesn’t just use the fact that we enjoy sex and then manipulate culture into telling us that it’s normal to circumvent the boundaries, in order to get us to fall into the trap, he also uses the boundaries themselves. In the original blueprints, people wouldn’t have sex outside of marriage. This means that, for most of us, we end up having to wait far longer than the point at which we first become interested in it. This is only compounded by the fact that in our modern American culture, we're getting married later and later in life. So sex ends up taking on this almost mythical quality. We know it’s good, but we don’t really understand the specifics, and we can’t really do anything about it until marriage. This results in a couple of things that the enemy will take advantage of. First, it’s really easy to take a look at what the culture says about sex, and what we know about sex, and then glorify it to ridiculous proportions. Our expectations become pretty absurd (and this can end up being damaging in more ways than one, but we’ll touch on that later) and that only drives us to want to jump the gun on God’s plan more. In our minds, we make sex so amazing that waiting until we can fulfill our sexual desires within God’s boundaries seems insanely difficult. This compounds with the fact that the even having boundaries creates a sense of illicitness. Just as any kid can tell you, when you tell them they can’t have the cookie, or the toy, or the whatever-it-is, they only want it more, even if it wasn’t really something that they cared that much for in the first place. The same goes for sex. This is only amplified in the Christian environment, since knowing how good God made it, and knowing it could be a long time before we get to partake in that goodness, and knowing that sex is off limits otherwise, gives sex this certain dark mystique about it. Fortunately, many Christians, even being faced with these struggles, are not prepared to go out and have sex, whether because they are afraid of the consequences, can’t give up on their convictions that easily, or any other reason. Thing go wrong, however, when rather than accept abstinence and purity, Christians turn to pornography as an acceptable alternative to sex. Let me tell you something: coming to the conclusion that pornography is a lesser evil that we can live with while waiting to have real sex is just playing into the enemy’s hands (for a whole lot of reasons we will get to in the next lesson). You’re telling yourself you’re going to use giving into your sexual desires as a way to resist giving into your sexual desires, which is just horribly flawed logic to begin with; it’s like deciding to pickpocket people as an alternative to robbing a bank. It’s not long before we find that that “lesser sin” can easily escalate to the sin you were trying to avoid in the first place. The consequences may not seem as great, but they are long term and damaging, and as far as God is concerned, pornography, lust and sex are all sin on the same level. Addiction But the difficulties don’t end there. Should we let ourselves get caught in the trap of making sex something casual and without boundary, we can find ourselves unable to escape from the trap we have ourselves set. Let me talk just a little bit about human physiology and the nature of addiction. I’ve heard people talk before about addictions to things like videogames and pornography, and about how these don’t qualify as true addictions because they don’t involve taking in any sort of external substance into the body. These addictions cannot come to the point where your body is incapable of surviving without them, like addiction to drugs can. That said, the reality of the situation is that your body has to deal with all sorts of substances (that it produces itself) every day. When we are exposed to something, say riding a rollercoaster, our brain tells our body to load up on adrenaline and endorphins. Substances like these prepare us to deal with stressful or physically demanding situations, can send signals to let us know that we are enjoying a new food, give someone that runners high after they run a 5k or give us a feeling of wellbeing and euphoria. Repeated exposure to these substances can, over time, weaken the body’s response to them. When you hear about people who are always need that next big adrenaline rush, this is why. After riding so many rollercoasters, they have to escalate to bungee jumping, or sky diving. Your brain does the same thing with any sort of sexual stimulation. When you have sex, the brain signals the body to release endorphins and other and other “feel good” chemicals into the blood stream. Over time, the more often you release the endorphins, the more your body will crave their release (it will also begin to make certain associations with what you are using to release those endorphins, but more on that later). In addition, as endorphins are introduced over time your body develops a tolerance and will need greater and greater amounts to achieve the same high. This system works out great within the context of marriage. But when it comes to pornography (or any other sort of sexual stimulation really) it means that the more you indulge yourself, the harder it will be to stay away and the more explicit the pornography will need to be. The longer you spend in the trap, the harder and harder it is to get yourself out of it. We may not become dependent on pornography in order to survive (as with some addictions), but we may find ourselves incapable of resisting its temptation; finding that it is dramatically impacting how we spend our time, detracting from our relationships, work, school, and spiritual life. The Downward Spiral So where does this leave us? We find ourselves surrounded: we are built to enjoy sex, then find ourselves isolated in a socially seductive culture telling us to blindly jump in, and then we get stuck with an addiction that we can’t climb out of. It seems as though the odds are thoroughly stacked against us. For many of us, myself included, we come to a point where the question must be asked. If it's inevitable that i'm going to be exposed to pornography of some kind at some point, and it's incredibly difficult to pull ourselves out, what's the point? Why not give up? After so long of fighting an failing, it's easy to start to believe that God simply wouldn't expect us to be free from pornography, or worse, that the call to maintain purity is a cruel joke on His part. A cycle begins with all of this thinking. We fail to maintain our standards, we feel guilt and shame. Freedom seems a mirage and our situation is hopeless. We pray for deliverance and then find ourselves stumbling into the same old traps, wondering where God is. Discouragement and disillusionment take over and we're too afraid of what the people around us would think or say to seek help. When we are left without hope, it can be easy to simply give into our sexual desires. If you can't overcome your addictions, may as well succumb to them. What's worse, that sexual fulfillment provides a brief comfort and for a few minutes everything is fine, until the guilt kicks in again and the cycle starts over. And the hole becomes deeper and deeper all the while. No wonder it's so hard to escape. In fact, it’s probably impossible to hold on to purity in your own power. Is purity really worth it? Bringing it all together This is why God’s command for us to be free from lust is so crucial. God is not trying to frustrate us, He just knows that it’s far easier never to fall into the trap in the first place, than it is to try and free yourself from it once you’ve already fallen in. He also knows that you were made to be free, to be whole and pure. Fortunately, we are not in this fight alone. We have other people who can help us avoid the snares, and people to hold us accountable as we work our way out of the ones we fell into, and we have God, who can give us grace and lead us on the path to purity. "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible (Matt 19:26)." Hopelessness is not our final destiny. We can have freedom from pornography, and no matter how deep the hole is, we have a God who can lift us out. Remember, If you are currently struggling with pornography, lust, or anything. This is not the end of the story. There is more to come. There is hope in the future. We have explored up some of the reasons why pornography presents such a wide and persistent problem for us as Christians next lesson we are going to talk about the lies that pornography tells us, the impact they have on our lives, and finally, the hope for deliverance from the trap we let ourselves fall into. Part 3 Category:Blog posts